Swedenborg in History

Catalog description

Taught by GTU. This course will substantially engage with one strand of Swedenborg's thought in cultural history: the ways his particular conceptualizations of mind, body, and soul impacted various alternative medicine currents in the 19th century, largely within an American context. We will begin by situating Swedenborg's work as a scientist and visionary theologian within different interpretative frameworks, from western esotericism to wisdom literature, seeking to underscore the continuities between Swedenborg's science and religion. The majority of the course will then focus on various fields where his role as "visionary scientist" or "scientific mystic" became amplified and transformed, from spiritualism and mesmerism, to osteopathy, to the emergence of the New Thought movement. This course is intended as a follow-up to "Introduction to Swedenborgian Thought," though students need not have taken that as a prerequisite for this course. One critical goal of this course for students in the ordination track for becoming clergy affiliated with the Swedenborgian Church of North America is to facilitate thinking about Swedenborg's cultural reception outside of denominational history as a resource for ministry: to better understand Swedenborg's strong, if diffuse, presence within American esotericism. [Auditors with faculty permission]